A Devil’s Question: On the nature of “chance”

“If you agree than an innocent child goes immediately to heaven for all eternity when they die, and you also agree with the commonly held position that only a minority of adults become Christians and make it to heaven, then, especially in an unbalanced mind, that could justify killing children. An ill individual could easily believe that they are actually doing a good thing, ensuring that those children receive a life of bliss at Jesus side that they might not otherwise have.

I am not trying to be cruel or insensitive, but if you are going to look for answers or possible reasons then no idea should be automatically excluded because it is unpleasant.”

The assumption of the preceding question is that since there is a real chance that a child might NOT accept Christ, then by murdering them you do good, because you eliminate the chance of non-acceptance and ensure their entry into heaven.

This may sound reasonable, but like the philosophical atrocity of Calvinism, it is only reasonable until you employ actual reason; and then, frankly, its truth is revealed; and the truth is that this is a false, and therefore bad assumption.

What exactly do we mean by chance? What is chance, exactly?

Is chance real? Or is chance merely a theoretical construct based retrospective analysis; looking at what actually was in order to determine what might be; a mathematical formula shown to predict with varying degrees of precision, depending on the formula and the situation in question? I submit, yes…THAT. The latter. It is not real.

In the grand scheme of reality and existence, I submit that the entire idea of chance is untenable because it has ultimately a fatal flaw, and that is the fact that it deals with the hypothetical–it is not even a verifiable TRUTH, like a natural law, or some other repeatable event. In other words, when you say “chance shows”, and you point to evidence, you are really pointing to something else as the proof of the predicted outcome. Chance, by definition, means only “possibly“. And possibly does not equal causality…ever. Chance produces nothing.

Let me explain, lest you think I’m denying math.

I’m not denying math, but I do believe that the math of chance cannot, in fact, declare something that is not, an IS. Chance does NOT cause, and it does not create reality. It predicts. Nothing more. Chance is the mathematics of prediction, it is not the creator of the present before it is the present. It is never the cause in the cause and effect relationship of abstract truths. Thus, to use chance as the primary functional premise for…well, anything is not reasonable. How much more unreasonable for murder. How much MORE unreasonable for the murder of the morally innocent.

Again, literally and existentially speaking, chance is NOT in fact, real. It IS merely theoretical—for nothing IS or has come to pass until it IS and has come to pass, by definition, and so invoking chance is always invoking the purely hypothetical, and is merely making assumptions and guesses (some more “scientific” than others, of course) about what does not yet exist at all—and as such, it should never be used as a foundation for the larceny of anything, but in particular, the human body. In other words, the idea of murdering the morally innocent to save them from the chance of hell is akin to saying that you will steal a thing from someone to avoid the chance that they might have that thing stolen. This thinking is patently absurd, but is precisely the argument we make when we argue that killing a child removes the chance that they might not go to heaven. Chance isn’t in any way real (e.g. tangible; or even a “truth”)…and what you are actually doing by seeking to head off chance at the pass is merely creating a new circumstance which is based on nothing that can be verified as actually true. Since chance is mere prediction, it doesn’t really exist, and so it cannot be used as a rationale for creating a new circumstance in order to avoid the circumstance which now has, by definition, NO chance of occurring. Once the circumstance and/or context is changed, chance becomes irrelevant to the entire scenario from beginning to end. And so it is impossible to invoke chance as the rationale for CHANGING the context. Again…I stole the thing so that there is no chance the thing could be stolen. In other words, acting upon “chance” means you remove the chance from the equation; and once that is done, chance is no longer an excuse for doing what it is you did. You REMOVE chance, so that it no longer applies. And what I’m saying is that when you do that, then murder is simply murder, removed from chance, making it merely what it is: a brutal, senseless act. You cannot PROVE chance until you can see the outcome, and then it is no longer chance at all (more later on that); when the outcome is impossible because you changed the context, chance no longer applies. And to invoke it as a rationale becomes redundant non-logic. Chance is irrelevant unless the circumstance is allowed to come to pass so that what happens can be seen so that chance can be quantified. And then, once it is quantified, it is by definition, no longer chance. So…chance CANNOT be PROOF that what you did was morally, legally, or logically JUST, ever, because it is a false idea at the core. It has only the illusion of efficacy.

Even more, chance is NOT, by definition, even theoretically applicable if we murder, because in murder we seen the utter removal of the life of the person beyond the moment of their death. There is in fact zero chance that they could not choose Christ, or choose Him, or eat a hamburger, or read a book, or stand on their head, or cluck like a chicken. Without LIFE, chance is moot. So—to give another illustration— to declare that we will murder a child in order to avoid the chance that he or she will deny Christ is like saying I will paint the fence white so as to avoid the chance that I will paint it black. If I paint it white, then there is no chance that I have painted it black. And also, if I painted it white then there is, retrospectively, ZERO chance that I could have painted it black. Chance is, again, a mathematical illusion. And the danger of using it as an empirical tool is clearly seen in this disturbing scenario.

Ahhhhh…yes, you see it now, don’t you. What I talked about waaaaaaaay back in some long buried post. Retroactive Inevitability of Choice (RIC). And it is precisely this theory of mine that is relevant to this discussion, among others. Chance, in actually, is a lie…a construct that means nothing ultimately. There are cause and effect laws, and there are verifiable events and outcomes which have been observed. But chance itself is really a fantastical construct. Mathematics makes it seem much more literal and “real” than it is; but remember, the math relies solely on what has already been, and can be verified and observed. The math is always retrospective; it never observes future events. Why? Because the future does not actually exist. Chance itself can be a useful way to predict, but it is NOT itself causality.

In other words, going back to the fence illustration, to use chance as a rationale for painting the fence white lacks any fundamental logic at all, because, once I painted it white, I could not have ever painted it black (but the mathematics of chance assume that I could; but I couldn’t, so chance, again, is merely an illusion…predictive, possibly, but never creating reality). How do I know this? Because I can clearly see that the fence is white. There is the proof, right before my paint splatter glasses, that chance is an illusion. Choice is real, yes! Choice is actual. You CAN do this or that. But once done, you could NEVER have done anything but what you CHOSE to do. But you can never know what it is you inevitably chose to do until and after you chose to do it.

And again, the choice is in fact real. Because the choice is the cause. The white fence is the effect. The proof that the choice is real is seen in fact that the white fence exists. It is a result of the cause, which was the choice. If the choice was not real the fence could not exist because the fence, being the effect, cannot exist by definition absent the cause…that is the law of cause and effect. It is impossible for the effect to stand APART from the cause, by definition. And incidentally this is the argument we make when we try to argue determinism via predestination. We argue that all effects exist without causes, which is metaphysically and physically impossible. The fact that there is an effect is proof of the choice that is the onus for the cause. If we argue determinism, we argue effects without causes, which is impossible if we believe that we are predicting what will happen, because what will happen has not, by definition, happened yet. How does it exist? Because the cause generates it. And if the cause generates it, then we must concede that the choice is real. The choice to paint the fence black or white is real, and the white fence proves it. The choice is real because it is the cause; if it is not the cause, it is an effect, and an effect cannot generate another effect (I know what some are thinking; let me say that the effect must become a subsequent cause…to argue this further is purely semantics and irrelevant). So if the choice is not real then the fence is not white. But the white fence also proves that chance is a lie, ultimately. Because it is white, there is no chance it could ever, ever have been black.

So more to the point, if the children are dead, there is NO chance of them doing anything, by definition; so what, exactly, are you avoiding the chance of? If a child accepts Christ at some point in their life, then there is NO chance that they could not have not accepted Christ. As far as you know, because you cannot observe and verify the veracity of your assumptions of “chance” for the person involved—because, among other reasons, the child’s life is terminated—every child you murder DID, in fact, choose Christ, and so you murdered for murder’s sake alone, and risked your own salvation (and I submit that you do forfeit it if you persist in your false assumption that violating God’s command is in fact “good”) by violating a direct command of God for no real altruistic good, no matter how you twisted the logic. To say that you have murdered only children who have accepted Christ is ultimately just as reasonable as saying there is a “chance” that some were not in fact going to choose Christ. Because you removed the context where the outcome could be seen, you cannot know anything real. Murder, again is simply murder. For literally no reason. Unless the thing with which we are regarding chance is actually SEEN or NOT SEEN then chance is completely irrelevant (perhaps, mathematical precedence is something to be considered, but never regarding moral decisions…why? because chance is not in fact real, and thus it makes a very poor moral and metaphysical foundational assumption). So, you are not murdering for chance at all. You are murdering for murder’s sake, nothing more.

This is the metaphysical and moral truth. And if you were to persist in the wickedness of murdering the innocent of God, your soul would be in very real mortal danger. You would have sacrificed your own salvation for rebellion in the form of murder as a philosophy.